3D printing PLA and silicone elastomer
structures with sugar solution support materia
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3D printing technology has been used for rapid prototyping since 1980’s and is still developing in a way that can be used for customized products with complex design and miniature features. Among all the available 3D printing techniques, Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is one of the most widely used technologies because of its capability to build different structures by employing various materials. However, complexity of parts made by FDM is greatly limited by restriction of using support materials. Support materials are often used in FDM for several complex geometries such as fully suspended shapes, overhanging surfaces and hollow features. This paper describes an approach to 3D print a structure using silicone elastomer and polylactide fiber (PLA) by employing a novel support material that is soluble in water. This support material is melted sugar which can easily be prepared at a low cost. Sugar is a carbohydrate, which is found naturally in plants such as sugarcane and sugar beets; therefore, it is completely organic and eco-friendly. As another advantage, the time for removing this material from the part is considerably less than other commercially available support materials and it can be removed easily by warm water without leaving any trace. Experiments were done using an inexpensive desktop 3D printer to fabricate complex structures for use in soft robots. The results envision that further development of this system would contribute to a method of fabrication of complex parts with lower cost yet high quality.
Objective
In this paper, sugar properties were studied and for the first time sugar was used as support material in FDM printing using a customized 3D printing setup. The sugar properties including dissolution characteristics and cost efficiency, are beneficial for different usages such as applying it to the 3D printing process as a support material to fabricate mechanical structures. Sugar also solidifies quickly when melted. The quality of sugar during extrusion and the dimension precision of the printed parts is observed later in this work and finally, an elastomer material is added to a sugar 3D printed structure to build a soft robot part.
Conclusion
In this work, melted sugar is studied and for the first time, it was used as a support material for 3D printing. It is possible to control the extrusion process by changing the parameters in the system which influence the feed ratio, viscosity of the melted sugar and the speed of extrusion. Moreover, it can be claimed that temperature and speed are important factors to control the quality of 3D printing. Optimizing the setup to more advanced, multi-material 3D printing and improving the quality of the printing for making more complicated structures are the aims of the future work